specifying a perpetual reversion, Mālik and his companions hold two different views.
The first regards the endowment as an ʿumrā (a life-estate grant): when the named beneficiary dies, the property reverts to its donor. This is the position of his Madinan disciples.
The second maintains that, upon the beneficiary’s extinction, it remains a ḥabs and passes to the donor’s nearest relatives on the day it reverts; this is the view adopted by his Egyptian followers.
Likewise, when someone says, “My property is a ḥabs for such-and-such purpose,” but the purpose is not one of the perpetual avenues, two reports from Mālik exist. In the first, the property stays with the very cause he named; when that cause ceases, it becomes a ḥabs for the donor’s closest kin, and if they die out it is assigned in perpetuity to the poor and the needy. In the second report, once the designated purpose ends, ownership returns to the donor during his lifetime and, after him, to his heirs, just like an ʿumrā.
If a person establishes a ḥabs without specifying to whom it is to be directed, its revenue is spent on the various paths of righteousness and public benefit.
Whoever endows a ḥabs for his children, his children’s children, and his descendants in perpetuity, without fixing any reversion, will never be without beneficiaries: when his children and grandchildren vanish, the endowment passes to the donor’s closest agnates on the day it reverts. It may neither be sold nor given away, nor can it return to the donor.
The narrations from Mālik and his students differ over whether female relatives share in the produce. The settled position among his Egyptian adherents is that women are entitled to both the revenues and the right of residence.
Even if the donor’s children and grandchildren die while he is still alive, the ḥabs never comes back to him. Instead, it follows the order just described, passing to his nearest agnates—or to those who would be agnates were they male. When those agnates die out, it moves to the next closest group, and so on, as long as any remain; it never reverts to the donor. Should all the donor’s agnatic relatives perish and none remain, the endowment is then treated like the general awqāf of the Muslims, to be managed at the judge’s discretion.